George Packer's Blog, page 75

Mexican Journalists Lose Another Colleague to the Drug War

In his last public remarks, made on a live television show, “El Almohadazo,” on Monday morning, the Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas spoke by Skype with the show’s presenter, Fernanda Tapia. Their conversation dealt with issues pertaining to Mexico’s decade-old drug war, in which at least a hundred and seventy-five thousand people have died and another twenty-eight thousand have disappeared. Valdez’s home state of Sinaloa—turf of El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel—has been a key battleground from the start, and throughout he had been there, reporting from the frontline. Valdez had earned a reputation as a brave, independent, and outspoken reporter, as well as a prolific one. He wrote a column for Río Doce, a weekly local newspaper that he had co-founded; reported for the national daily La Jornada; and had published a half dozen books on Mexico’s narco underworld, including “Miss Narco,” “Huérfanos del Narco,” and his latest, “Narcoperiodismo.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Toll of the Drug Trade in the Brazilian Amazon
Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now
El Chapo, Episode III: The Farce Awakens

Trump or Comey: Who’s the Real “Nut Job” Here?

The first four months of the Trump Administration have generated many real headlines that could have appeared first in a satirical publication such as the Onion or The New Yorker’s own the Borowitz Report. But the headline that appeared on the Times’ Web site on Friday afternoon may have been the most bizarre yet: “Trump Told Russians that Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure from Investigation.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Iran’s Moderates Win Election, but It Won’t Matter to Trump
Nation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
The Bogus Memos of the Trump Administration

The Bogus Memos of the Trump Administration

A maddening type of official document has emerged as a tool of the Trump Administration. This document is short and inadequate to its stated task: providing a rational basis for a highly suspect executive decision. Often, the document contradicts the words or actions of the President himself.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Iran’s Moderates Win Election, but It Won’t Matter to Trump
Nation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
Trump or Comey: Who’s the Real “Nut Job” Here?

The Lights Are Going Out in the Middle East

Six months ago, I was in the National Museum in Beirut, marvelling at two Phoenician sarcophagi among the treasures from ancient Middle Eastern civilizations, when the lights suddenly went out. A few days later, I was in the Bekaa Valley, whose towns hadn’t had power for half the day, as on many days. More recently, I was in oil-rich Iraq, where electricity was intermittent, at best. “One day we’ll have twelve hours. The next day no power at all,” Aras Maman, a journalist, told me, after the power went off in the restaurant where we were waiting for lunch. In Egypt, the government has appealed to the public to cut back on the use of light bulbs and appliances and to turn off air-conditioning even in sweltering heat to prevent wider outages. Parts of Libya, which has the largest oil reserves in Africa, have gone weeks without power this year. In the Gaza Strip, two million Palestinians get only two to four hours of electricity a day, after yet another cutback in April.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Iran’s Moderates Win Election, but It Won’t Matter to Trump
Nation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
Trump or Comey: Who’s the Real “Nut Job” Here?

Trump, Confucius, and China’s Vision

In the Chinese media, Jared Kushner’s name almost never appears without the title diyi nǚxu, or First Son-in-Law. But, from a Chinese perspective, First Son-in-Law, as a job description, supersedes even Kushner’s official role as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and the myriad jobs which that role has come to encompass, from bringing peace to the Middle East to handling relations with, among other countries, China. The position surpasses, in both influence and stature, the limits of any formally designated office.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Will Robert Mueller Explore Trump’s Russian Business Ties?
What’s in James Comey’s Memos?
In Trump’s America

What Kind of Loyalty Does a President Need?

In April, 1965, the leaders of India and Pakistan, nations then on the brink of war, cancelled meetings with President Lyndon Johnson, and L.B.J. thought he knew why. While flying to Texas aboard Air Force One, he huddled with his speechwriter, Dick Goodwin. “Do you know there are some disloyal Kennedy people over at the State Department who are trying to get me; that’s why they stirred things up?” Johnson asked. “I didn’t know that,” Goodwin replied. “Well, there are,” Johnson said, “They didn’t get me this time, but they’ll keep trying.” Johnson’s obsession with his political rival, Robert Kennedy, had, by that time, become so overpowering—and his insistence on “all-out loyalty” so pronounced—that it was bogging down the Presidential-appointments process and driving good men out of government. “We cannot afford to lose them,” Harry McPherson, the White House counsel, warned Johnson in a bravely blunt memo. “Neither, in my opinion, can we afford to give them a polygraph-loyalty test. . . . If the word gets around that one has to put on horse-blinders to work for you, you will probably come out with a bunch of clipped yes-men who are afraid of their own shadows and terrified of yours.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Will Robert Mueller Explore Trump’s Russian Business Ties?
Trump, Confucius, and China’s Vision
What’s in James Comey’s Memos?

A Special Rule for Robert Mueller

Robert Mueller, the former F.B.I. director named to investigate the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, will have broad discretion to prosecute any crimes he uncovers. But an equally important part of his mandate is lesser known: his duty to write a report on his findings.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Will Robert Mueller Explore Trump’s Russian Business Ties?
Trump, Confucius, and China’s Vision
What’s in James Comey’s Memos?

The Single Greatest Witch Hunt in American History, for Real

It didn’t take long for our President to declare the appointment of a special counsel for the Russia inquiry “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” Historical literacy has never been for everyone. Even the ancients complained of ignorance about the past and inaccuracies on the page. The greatest witch hunt in American history, of course, occurred in 1692, not 2017. It’s worth revisiting, as it happens to offer a few lessons about name-calling, special prosecutors, and abuses of power. Strictly speaking, the Salem witch trials were less a hunt than a free-for-all. Beginning with three more or less usual suspects, they ended in a colony-wide epidemic. Fingers pointed in every direction as friends and families accused one another. By some counts as many as seven hundred witches flew about Massachusetts. A special court prosecuted the cases according to the law of the land. Nineteen innocent men and women hanged. Over several days, a twentieth would be crushed under stones, for contempt of court.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
What Will Become Of Roger Ailes’s Fox News?
Paul Ryan Sets Google News Alert for the Moment When Trump Becomes Unpopular Enough to Betray
If Donald Trump Were Actually a Battery

What Will Become Of Roger Ailes’s Fox News?

Certainty has been the condition of the evening programs on Fox News for a generation, but on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday night, which aired just a few hours after the Justice Department announced it had appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation of possible links between Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and Russia, doubt crept onto the screen. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s counsellor, had been scheduled to appear on the show, Carlson told his audience, but the White House had cancelled shortly before broadcast, without giving much of an explanation. “It does seem a little chaotic over there,” Carlson observed. To replace Conway, he had invited Matthew Schlapp, the President of the American Conservative Union and a Trump ally, who had been to the White House earlier in the day, and who said the atmosphere there had been tense. “There really is nothing more stressful in life than being investigated,” Schlapp said. Carlson agreed.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Single Greatest Witch Hunt in American History, for Real
Paul Ryan Sets Google News Alert for the Moment When Trump Becomes Unpopular Enough to Betray
If Donald Trump Were Actually a Battery

How Impeachment Ended Up in the Constitution

On the morning of Friday, July 20, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, addressed the question of whether or not a President could be impeached while in office. A king might be beheaded, a Prime Minister toppled. What fate could befall a terrible President? Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, moved to strike out a proposed phrase stipulating that the President could be removed “on impeachment and conviction for malpractice or neglect of duty.” Morris thought that if a President committed crimes, he wouldn’t be reëlected, and that would be that, since no other solution accorded with the separation of powers. “Who,” he wondered, “shall impeach?” The irascible George Mason, of Virginia, found this argument absurd. “Shall any man be above justice?” Mason asked. “Above all, shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?” It was as good a question then as it is now.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Single Greatest Witch Hunt in American History, for Real
What Will Become Of Roger Ailes’s Fox News?
Paul Ryan Sets Google News Alert for the Moment When Trump Becomes Unpopular Enough to Betray